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August 02, 2007

Day 1

Last night's workout, the first of Augustathon, was an open water swim in the lake. The past couple of times I've hit the lake, I've been able to finish the whole mile. However, since I donated blood yesterday afternoon, I was thinking that I'd just settle for a half-mile last night. Then I got to the beach and the coaches talked me into trying for the entire mile.

It was warm, but I got into my wetsuit anyway. Partially because I want to swim in it as much as possible so I can get used to it, and partially because I'm a little afraid of swimming in the lake without it. We got into the water and while it was "calm" by lake standards, it was "ridiculously wavy" by Dawnie standards. Apparently I've just gotten lucky and had incredibly calm waters when I've been swimming in the lake. The good news is I naturally float on top of the waves and don't fight them or try to bust through them. The bad news is the constant moving up and down makes me dizzy and freaks me out. I'm also not a fan of looking up to sight or turning my head to breathe and being greeted with a wall of water. No good.

I was swimming with one of the coaches, which was good since he helped me a lot with sighting and swimming in a straight line. However, I kept swallowing water, I was getting dizzy, and, to put it bluntly: I was not having a good time. I hung in there for as long as I could, but when I got about 650 yards or so out from the shore, I had to turn around. I'd had enough. Enough dizzying waves. Enough eating lake water. Just enough.

So we turned around. I made it back to shore dizzy and slightly overheated. I stripped out of my wetsuit as fast as I could - the cool lake water felt great on my upper body and face, but it was uncomfortably cold on my legs. Ugh.

When I got out of the water, I was not a happy camper. All I could think was, "Dude, that sucked. I am so screwed on race day if there's rough water." Then I realized: even with the rough water and the fact that I was down a pint of blood (which, really: most people would have been smarter than I and not tried to swim for an hour in the lake after giving blood. Mental note for next time), I still made it 3/4 of a mile. I only have to go a mile on race day, and I've still got 3.5 weeks. I will be fine. This wasn't a horribly sucky workout - this was a character-building workout.

All the same, I'm ridiculously excited about the fact that I get to swim in a wave-free pool tonight.

Posted by Dawn at August 2, 2007 06:42 AM

Comments

Posted by: jkrunning at August 2, 2007 03:21 PM